Many transactions are authorized, verified, or acknowledged by signature of a person involved in the transaction. In many situations it has become important to capture the signature at the time it is written and to transmit a representation of the signature to a remote site to verify the authenticity of the signature. In other situations, capture of the signature and storage, or transmission to a remote site, is important for record keeping. In an attempt to meet the requirements of real time signature capture, many methods and devices have been used. Typically, the approach in the past has been to use special signature pads which are pressure sensitive or sensitive to magnetic or electrical fields generated when used with special pens. Frequently, the special pens are tethered to or near the special signature pads, making their use awkward for the general public. In addition, the special signature pads are awkward to integrate with existing equipment and existing techniques of acquiring authorizing or acknowledging signatures.
Special pens and special signature pads are prone to damage from the abuse received under typical conditions of use. As a result, most methods and devices for real time capture of signatures are plagued with poor reliability. Furthermore, the use of special electronic pens has been poorly received by the general public. The fact that the special pen and special signature pad must be used by the general public increases the likelihood of damage. In portable equipment, the integration of a special signature pad in the portable equipment generally means that the equipment must be given over to the person signing. This is yet a further drawback, in that the portable equipment can be dropped and damaged, and, in addition, the operator or attendant of the equipment is prevented from completing other tasks with the portable equipment while the signature is being obtained.
In many instances, such as in package delivery services, the need exists to obtain many signatures and to retain the signatures until the opportunity arises to transfer the stored signature data to a more permanent repository. Thus, the need exists for signature capture and storage for a relatively large number (on the order of hundreds) of signatures in a portable device.
Thus, a need exists for a reliable and efficient device which is capable of capturing and storing a plurality of signatures which are made with standard writing instruments on arbitrary writing surfaces.